


Reaper

by Four_Four



Category: Iron Man (Movies), Percy Jackson and the Olympians - Rick Riordan, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate POV, Civil War Team Iron Man, M/M, Other, Post-Captain America: Civil War (Movie), Steve Rogers has a tunnel vision, Tony Stark dies in Siberia, Tony dies, but not really
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-20
Updated: 2020-10-20
Packaged: 2021-03-08 21:21:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,560
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27123100
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Four_Four/pseuds/Four_Four
Summary: Steve is not a man who dreams.When he was thin and sick, he didn't have much to dream about, dreams didn't bring food or pay the bills, dreams were delusions invented by wealthy men who didn't bother to eat.Or, where Tony Stark is really a demigod.
Relationships: Luke Castellan/Tony Stark
Comments: 4
Kudos: 76





	Reaper

**Author's Note:**

> Well, I wanted to add a certain kind of Greek mysticism to that, I always imagined that the nickname "The Merchant of Death" would be much more than a nickname, besides, I love Percy Jackson and I loved the villain role that Luke played, even if it's for a cause that he would never win, I also think Luke and Tony are extremely similar, either because they were considered villains even when they tried to do the right thing or because they were ostracized by people, absent fathers, slightly unbalanced mothers.
> 
> How did Tony meet Luke? It is the typical Howard discovered that Tony was not his son and in fact the result of a case, he leaves Tony on the street when he is four, consequently he meets Luke, Annabeth and Thalia, Howard still presented projects that Tony did sporadically to not raise suspicions, yes, he still entered MIT.
> 
> Honestly, I tried my best to edit this and make it error free, but my first language is not English and I hate to edit HTML files, it is the ruin of my life.
> 
> As iconic diva Cardi B says, I want to thank the haters who read my story and commented, you are making me money (not money, but I would like that).

Steve is not a man who dreams.

When he was thin and sick, he didn't have much to dream about, dreams didn't bring food or pay bills, dreams were delusions invented by wealthy men who didn't bother to eat.

When Steve Rogers, the skinny from Brooklyn became Captain America, he didn't have to dream, he had what he wanted, he was fighting with bullies and finally, after years, he could win a fight.

Then the plane was buried under tons of ice, and then Steve was awake and he didn't need to dream, the dreams he would have had were either dead in the Alps or lost in dementia.

But Bucky was alive and he just didn't need to dream, he had the dream at his fingertips, because Bucky would understand, Bucky would know what was going on, he was also a man from another time.

Bucky didn't understand, Bucky always wanted to see the future, Bucky was always an excited little boy who dreamed of flying cars and robots, Bucky was living his own dream and Steve was stuck in his own nightmare.

Things went downhill after that, Steve avoided thinking about it too much, thinking that Tony Stark was dead, thinking that the whole world was mourning a man dressed in a metal can.

Crying for his fulminating heart attack.

Steve knew, he was there, he saw his brown eyes full of terror, his hands raised, he felt the heavy metal crush on his shield, he heard the glass crack and saw the light go out, he left a man behind.

He left a man behind in the confidence that everything would be okay ...

… And Tony died.

Steve is not a man who dreams.

But Steve is a man who has nightmares about white snow, dark brown eyes and steady hands that close his mouth while Tony screams, screams and screams and Steve hits the shield on his chest, repeatedly in an endless loop.  
*  
*  
*  
Tony doesn't remember exactly how he met Luke Castellan.

He vaguely remembers looking up at blue eyes and blond hair and thinking _"wow, this guy looks like Captain America"._

Tony is also 46 years old and remembers looking up into Captain America's eyes and thinking, _"Wow, this guy looks like Luke Castellan"._

It's a strange synchronicity for him to think that the eight-year-old blond boy who saved him from an empousa has the same eyes as the guy who killed him when he was 46, he thinks, in what Luke would say.

He can almost imagine his voice, his face, his scar and eyes that were once blue, he can imagine Luke, looking forward with hard eyes, his mouth tilted in a silent mockery, he can imagine Luke looking at him with eyes that pierce souls saying _"Are you a man or a mouse?"_

_"A man"_ he wants to answer, but he is tired, so, so tired.

He's tired of fighting two American icons, Tony is so, so tired of fighting battles that he can't win, he's tired of being everyone's scapegoat, he's tired of trying to protect his back only to find that betrayals too comes through the chest.

— FRIDAY? — he asks, chokes out, the coppery taste on his tongue is a stark reminder that sometimes, sometimes betrayals come from above too, he wonders, briefly before crushing the thought, if that was how Luke felt .

— Boss? — is a question, not like JARVIS, not like JARVIS, who never asked and was always sure, not like JARVIS who left an empty hole in his chest that could never be replaced.

— Start the Castellan protocol. — Tony says, with dark resolution.

FRIDAY doesn't say anything, he thinks, for a moment, that he lost another of his AI's and is going to die alone in an ice-coated metal coffin, alone on a roof with Luke watching him mockingly.

But he's not on a roof, just as Luke isn't here, unlike Luke, Tony is going to die alone on a concrete floor, trapped in a golden metal coffin and white snow, well, he thinks, at least it's the coffin most expensive in the world.

— Protocol started. — FRIDAY finally responds, he can almost hear the hesitation in his voice, he can feel the metallic flaw that JARVIS never had.

He doesn't answer, he doesn't need to, he would try to explain to JARVIS, he needed to explain to JARVIS, FRIDAY is not like that, she doesn't need explanations, she needs silent actions and words that Tony can't give.

FRIDAY activates the automatic release protocol that lifts the chest plate of the armature, the ARC reactor detaches from the chest with a soft hiss, his ribs don't have the same smoothness, they spread beside him as if they were melted icing, Tony doesn't have to look down to know you’re going to die.

Anthony Edward Stark closes his eyes in a frozen bunker in Siberia ...

… and die.

Anthony Carbonell opens his eyes for the first time in 29 years.  
*  
*  
*  
Steve always thought that the Avengers complex, surrounded by trees for miles, was a noisy place, be it Natasha sharpening her knives, Sam laughing with America's Next Top Model or Wanda playing guitar.

Now, just nine months after his death, everything seems silent, as if a mute button was pressed and the time in the complex froze, still looks the same, with its several floors and the stylized A in the hangar.

It is almost as if his presence was what made the place noisy, it was he who kept the complex running, now everything seems abandoned, even if it is well maintained, with trimmed bushes and clean windows.

Pepper waits for them in the hangar, he had the slightest hope that it was Tony over there, he swallows the disappointment that rises like vomit down his throat, Tony is not here because Steve killed him.

Pepper Potts is by no means a woman who could be called anything but intimidating, her well-pressed suits and always perfect hair gave her a sense of power that Steve only felt with Peggy Carter.

Steve always liked her, either because of his memory of young Peggy or because of his immeasurable strength, Pepper also seemed to like him, they were not friends, they were more like distant acquaintances than real friends.

Now, Pepper looks at them like literal dirt on her designer shoe, she doesn't greet them with an excited smile, or a spontaneous greeting.

— Don't think. — she begins, all the professional women who put the fear of God in them, her eyes are stones of pure ice, even colder than Siberia. — For a minute, that I would like to have you here. You are only here because Tony thought that one day the world would need you. I do not agree. — Pepper says, his blood red lips stuck in a twisted grimace. — I don't think the world needs murderers and terrorists.

Steve feels his breath enter his lungs like a punch of pure acid, Natasha and Clint had been murderers most of their lives, Bucky had no choice, but Steve, what was his excuse?

What excuse did he have to exchange a friend's life for another?

He clenches his teeth and forces himself not to back down.  
Pepper doesn't say much after that, but she still looks stiff as a board and looks at them with hawk eyes, it's almost as if she waits for them to take a knife and kill her in the middle of the kitchen.

Pepper smiled genuinely only twice, once when he hand over Clint's divorce papers, it's a shark smile with many sharp teeth and bright eyes, Steve shivers and wishes he never has to see her smile like that again.

Having unholy joy in destroying others.

Pepper also smiles as they pass through the room and spot Bucky's old metal hand on the coffee table, metal fingers wrapped around a human plastic heart.

Steve almost vomits again, he sees how Bucky cringes, he sees Natasha's eyebrows go up and she knows, she puts the pieces together that he didn't count, she knows and is furious, furious in a way he almost never sees.

He promised, Steve remembers, he promised Natasha that he would tell, he promised that it would be the first thing he would do when he met Tony, he remembers that she was surprised by the kindness that Tony reacted, letting Steve use his resources to search for the man who killed your parents.

But he didn't know, Tony never knew about his parents until he was dying on the dirty floor of a frozen bunker with the video of his dead parents playing over and over.

Steve feels his heart drop with the icy look that Natasha sends in his direction.

Natasha Romanoff was many things, a killer trained by Winter Soldier, the most prolific Black Widow in history, a phenomenal spy, but Nat, the friend, was protective, fun, the friend who knew how to kill someone with a toothpick and two rubber bands.

Most importantly, Nat the friend hated that people didn't keep her promises, and Steve promised her, and Steve didn't keep his promise.

Steve not only lost Tony in Siberia, he also lost Natasha, and with Natasha, Clint.

Well, he thinks, at least Bucky is here.  
*  
*  
*  
Tony did the Castellan protocol when he was 19, JARVIS was a young program, still discovering the world and Tony was alone.

Luke was dead, he still couldn't look at Annabeth and all his perspectives on the world were destroyed, he was broken, every bit he built of sweat and blood was crumbling.

It was difficult to be a son of his father when only one of them was born every century, little was known about them, nothing about their weaknesses or strengths, he remembers talking to his father, out of dreams.

He never sees his face exactly, something literal like his father has no face, he remembers his father whispering in his ear _"if you die, and you want to come back, you can do it just once, don't waste it."_

He creates the protocol on a cold winter night, Rhodey is sleeping in his room and Tony feels his heart heaving in his chest when he looks at him, his self-proclaimed best friend was not his best friend.

Rhodey knows nothing about Luke's mental manipulation, Rhodey will never know, it is impossible for the damage to his brain to be reversed without it becoming a vegetable.

Tony wonders, looking at Rhodey, sweet, happy and human Rhodey, how he can still love Luke after all he has done, after all the manipulations, betrayals and simple requests denied.

He wonders, when he lost his best friend to something he doesn't know.

The Castellan protocol is simple, it is an information system that warns your best friends - not Luke, Luke is dead, he chokes only at the thought - of his death and creates a new identity in the federal databases, schools and all establishments that he might think that an anonymous guy would live.

The older he gets, the more he improves the protocol, he is infallible, he does not leave a trail and he creates a totally new person from images made on computers.

He tells Rhodey what he's like when he's 23, he's drunk, Luke's face hovers darkly over him, blue eyes of disapproval fixed on the glass of whiskey in his hand, contrary to what he thinks, Rhodey doesn't run away to hills screaming or freaking out.

Rhodey just shrugs, takes the glass from his hands and takes it home.  
_“Do you have wings? You can fly?"_ Rhodey asks one day, when he sketches the figure of his father that he can see, black wings spread silvery scythe in his hand and dark hair covering his face, an eternally beautiful image.

_'Yes'_ he wants to answer, but the words, as well as the memories, choke in his throat. _"No."_ he replies, still remembering the sheer delight of having the wind blow in his face, the sheer delight of doing something that other people cannot do. _"No more."_ Rhodey doesn't ask, and he will always be grateful for that.

Pepper finds out when they start dating, he trusts her, always, but the moment never felt right, no real opportunity to tell her appeared, Pepper doesn't blink, just stares at him with his hair spread across the pillow and his lips twitched.

She looks so much like Luke that he has to look away.

He ends the long and painful story with a discouraged flourish, because Tony is the man who has everything and nothing.

_"When did you realize you loved, Luke?"_ she asks and Tony feels the breath being pulled from his chest.

_'When I followed him even though I knew it was the wrong thing.'_ He thinks, but does not answer, he looks at her in shock, as if the idea were absurd. _"Never, Luke and I were like brothers."_ he replies with a fake laugh.

Pepper purses his lips even more but does not respond, she knows that he is lying, she knows and will let him lie to himself for as long as necessary.

_"When I was eight years old."_ Tony thinks to himself, years later, in an empty Siberian bunker. _"When I was eight and Luke saw something in me."_

And then he dies.

*  
*  
*  
Colonel Rhodes also lives in the complex now, it's easier for the wheelchair, the elevator is bigger and he has more room to move, Sam cringes every time Rhodes comes into his line of sight.

Pepper warns that there is another person living in the complex, she does not speak much after that, only says that he lives here and that he does not like to be disturbed, Steve is curious about his new teammate, even though he has never seen him.

The complex is still quiet, Rhodey doesn’t leave much of his private floor, preferring to go out to physiotherapy and return immediately, ignoring them when they talk to him, Rhodey gets them out of his life so easily that it’s almost as if they don’t there were more.

Steve spends most of his time with Bucky or at the gym punching punching bags until his joints appear to be made of paper and pop with each blow, the fifth punching bag flies through the air and lands in an untidy pile.

_Tony would know how to fix it_ , Steve thinks darkly, adjusting another punching bag, _Tony would know how to make a punching bag something almost indestructible_ , but Tony is not here, a voice that looks suspiciously like Peggy whispers in his ear, Tony doesn't is here because you killed him.

He runs away from the gym after that, not necessarily from the gym, but from a dark memory that swirls in his mind ( _"Hit the best punch you can, Cap."_ Tony says with a twitch of the eyebrows and a petty smile).

Steve can't run away, not when the complex is all Tony, not when the hole in the wall, covered in a horrible picture that cost millions of dollars is a reminder of the lousy mood, the black jacket on the chair, which none of them had the courage to move , the anguished beeps of cleaning robots.

Every complex is pure Tony, and now they're seeing Tony everywhere, from his black jacket to the fire-breathing toaster that doesn't make toast, but coffee.

Steve doesn't blame himself for wandering around, rediscovering memories he thought he forgot, the fact that he is a super soldier and doesn't need to sleep much helps, he wanders around the complex and remembers the man who was his friend, the man who fit him the best that you can in the 21st century without asking for anything in return.

He wonders, very stingily, if it's only him who misses Tony and his loud laughs, nimble fingers and spiky hair, nobody talks about Tony or what he did to the team, Steve wonders if this is just a regret of a cold-blooded killer or if he really cared about Tony.

He kills that line of thought, he already tortures himself too much with guilt for killing Tony.

It is on one of those nights that he sees the other guest at the complex, he is not really paying attention to where he is going, but he is outside and he is just weird.

Everything is in hideous silence, crickets and cicadas do not sing, trees are immobile and the wind itself seems to have lost its life, as incredible as it may seem, the night itself seems darker.

Steve has the unnerving feeling of being watched from all angles, it's almost like he's being hunted.

From one moment to the next the guy is there.

Steve's brain seems to stop for a moment, because the guy just ... appears there as if he owns the place, he is shirtless, wearing only black pants and military boots, and as strange as it may seem, his back has huge wings black.

Steve feels he suffocates.

None of this can be real, Tony is dead, and yet here he is, in front of him, having appeared as an avenging angel, Steve stumbles backwards still looking into the eyes of his friend, ex-friend, he honestly does not know.

Tony just ... stands there, looking at Steve with curious brown eyes and a decades younger face and Steve is petrified, he can't look away, a sensation he hasn't felt since he was young.

His lungs tighten and his breath starts to hiss, he raises his hand to his lips and they're cold, Steve just looks down for a microsecond, so when he looks up, Tony is gone.

That night Steve has a nightmare about Maria and Howard crashing the car against a tree on an empty road, but it's not Maria and Howard in the car, it's him, with a cut on his forehead and bones that look like lead.

Steve knows how it happens now, he hears the sound of the motorcycle coming, and waits for the Winter Soldier in all his murderous glory, but instead, young Tony looks at him with dead brown eyes, his lips twisted in an insolent smile and he Open the mouth.

Young Tony starts spitting black feathers and doesn't stop.

— Where is your face? — young Tony asks, head tilted to the side, dirty brown hair hiding curious eyes.

Steve thinks, _what_ , and takes his hand to his face, he screams when pieces of skin and muscles stick to his fingers.

Tony laughs, laughs, laughs and laughs until all that is left of Steve is a dusty skull.

— You're like me now. — he says, the illusion of his young face disappears and Steve sees a skull with hollow eyes looking at his soul.

Steve wakes up screaming, with sheets stuck to his body and a frantic team beside him.  
*  
*  
*  
Tony is seventeen and is on an abandoned roof at the base they set up to attack Manhattan, it is dark now and Luke is sitting on the parapet looking intently down.

Tony knows that if Luke jumps, nothing will happen, the Achilles Curse makes him practically indestructible, while making him practically the most vulnerable human being of all time.

— You are not here to talk. — Luke, or the guy who should be Luke says, this thing that Luke has become is not his friend, that thing is not the boy he knew.

— No. — Tony says, his hands are sweaty and his hunting knife, the knife he got from Luke, looks heavy in his hands. — I'm here to kill you.

Luke laughs, his golden eyes so wrong, so cold and lifeless, this is not your friend, he is not the kind-eyed boy who has saved your life so many times.

— I would like to see you try. — Luke straightens his shoulders and picks up Blackbiter from the floor beside him.

Tony tries, he really tries to see some humanity on his friend's face, he tries to see something that reminds him of his childhood friend, he tries to see the boy who stole apples in the fall and hot soup on the cold winter days.

All he sees is disgust, anger and hatred.

Luke was so angry, the whole time that he forgot what was important.

Tony could never regret following Luke in his battles, he will never regret being a Titan's right hand, but he will always regret letting this go too far.

The destruction they caused because it was just them was a mediocre repeat of World War II.

He blocks memories from the roof, he forces himself to forget what he did, he forces himself to be just an innocent bystander who never sees anything but what he wants.

Tony comes out of that roof alone, with three broken ribs, a concussion, a debt the gods owe him, the grim resolution that he just killed his best friend and a promise he doesn't know if he can keep.

_"All the unclaimed ... Do not allow ... Do not allow this to happen again ..."_

'I promise,' he thinks, when he threatens the gods to do what he wants.

Gods are ancestral creatures, but even the most immortal of beings are afraid of death.  
*  
*  
*  
The first time Steve sees young Tony is any Wednesday.

The boy is sitting on a red cushion fiddling with tarot cards and a board on the coffee table, Rhodey in front of him, hands folded in his lap waiting patiently.

Steve can remember the old Madame Cassandra he met in the war, one of the few gypsies who were not killed, was a fat woman, wearing bright colors and clinking bracelets that shone in any light.

She was not very consistent, she did not make precise predictions, but she gave little glimpses and little stories to unoccupied soldiers who liked to have fun.

_"Watch your heads."_ she told Peggy on one of the only nights she was with the Howlies, Dum Dum convinced her that it was a good idea to let the gypsy read her hand. Peggy just laughed and nodded, accepting nothing for a moment.

Steve wonders, years later, whether Madame Cassandra was talking about HYDRA.

A shiver goes up his spine at the thought, they could have met Bucky years ago if Peggy had taken Madame's advice seriously, but Bucky would never be here, in a way, Steve will be grateful for HYDRA.

Not because it's a Nazi organization that does brainwashing, human experiments and kills anyone and everyone who stands in its way, but Steve will always be grateful that Bucky is still here.

A little crazy, without an arm, but still here.

— Tony? — Rhodey asks, after intense minutes where the team, which has just returned from an exhausting press conference, faces the new boy with attention, the team sighs collectively, Tony's name is almost sacred in the complex.

He doesn't look anything special, long black hair that hits his chin, thick eyebrows, long eyelashes and thin muscles under his black shirt, he leaves a strange feeling in the pit of Steve's stomach.

It is almost as if he were asthmatic again, being punched in another alley waiting for the death that never came.

— Tony, what did you see? — Rhodey asks when the boy, Steve refuses to call him Tony, he is not Tony, he will never be, opens his eyes slowly and looks at nothing, his eyes are identical to those of the real Tony, shiny chocolate brown.

— Death. — the boy replies. — And purple grapes.

— What else? — Rhodey instigates. - You are not telling me everything.

— Half of all life in the universe will die. — he finally replies, dropping the wooden board on the table and holding the letter firmly in his hand, now that Steve can see, it has all the letters of the alphabet in a light arc, with numbers from 1 to 0 and the words Good Bye underneath, it looks worn and old.

For some reason Steve feels he shouldn't be looking at the board, just the feeling causes a shiver down his spine, an icy whisper in his ear that makes his whole body squirm.

— Can we stop? Rhodey asks, his hands tighten and he looks pale.

— No. — fake Tony replies. — We can not.

The boy finally drops the letter on the table and the reaper stares at him, a skull with hollow eyes and black wings.

Steve feels a sense of dread building in his stomach, he almost forgets how to breathe, for some reason he knows, how he knows the sky is blue, that half the universe is going to die.  
*  
*  
*  
As long as Tony remembers, death has always been timeless.

The only thing in the entire universe that doesn't follow a timeline.

There is no way to stop death, you can get around it, of course, but it always comes, no matter if it is today, tomorrow, next week or a thousand years from now, death always comes.

That's why death is timeless, you can't eliminate death from the world, humans have become very good at avoiding it, with advanced technology, food and medicines, death has become a daily quarrel that the world was trying to resolve .

That is why wandering souls know everything.

The first time he spoke to a soul, Tony slept for days, and he still made it in time to save Luke from his failed mission, he lost the other two demigods, but Luke lived.

It was good, for a while, to know things that people didn't know.

Of course, it was a little weird to have spirits whispering in his ear, it was even weirder to look at people and think _“hey girl, if you leave the house today you’ll never come back”_ , it’s even weirder when he looks at Luke and a spirit whispers in your ear.

_"He's your best friend, but it's not yet time to kill him."_

Honestly, it scares him a little, as the spirits talk about it, about how to kill Luke is a certainty that they have, they ignore them, mainly until he understands.

_And the hero's soul, the cursed blade will reap_ , it was never Percy, it was always Tony, the burden of knowing what prophecies could be deflected if they wanted, or maybe someone was sorry for him, it was scary.

He learns to hear the dead after that, when the second great prophecy arrives, the dead stop talking and he is terrified, whatever is bad enough to mess with the dead is something he doesn't want to face.

It is not very promising when the dead are agitated, as they are now, they are anxiously waiting for something, they whisper, about purple grapes, colored stones and golden hands.

Tony wants to understand, he really wants to, but he was never a psychic, Tony was always a listener, he listens attentively and tries to visualize what the dead say.

He tries to see with the ouija boards and tarot cards, it seems superstitious, but it works, the cards speak and the board shows, and Tony sees, Tony listens.

He sees ashes, destruction and death.

He sees dust, screams and accidents.

Above all, he sees and hears the desperate cry of death, souls who should not die, souls who are screaming and fighting and falling apart in pure dust.

And Tony is terrified.

**Author's Note:**

> I know that many of you will not agree with Steve's vision in this chapter, many of the supporters of Team Iron Man put Steve with a distorted view, at least for me, I have always been and always will be Team Iron Man, but I think Steve is a special case, he has a broad view of everything, he sees what happens as a “good leader”, but he doesn't pay attention to the things he thinks are not important (like 120 countries and the UN) and refuses to listen to other people who know more than him (like Tony in every Civil War).
> 
> I admit that he has a tunnel view, for example:
> 
> Bucky: cut yourself with a knife.  
> Steve: well, it's obvious that we should ban knives from the world.
> 
> And I admit even more that the Civil War was a big pile of shit because Steve thinks his opinions count more than everyone else, and I know even more that he would blame Tony for something he has no control over (like the fact that Wanda be a spoiled bitch).


End file.
